LUCY
In one exhausting, terror-filled scream, she yelled: ‘HELP! Somebody stop Sam – please!’
‘It’s Sam – he’s in there with Nick – he had a weapon! Please, help me keep this door closed – we need to keep him trapped inside …’
Now Michaela would slip away to the galley, put something heavy in the bag to weight it down – a saucepan, a cooking utensil, anything – then drop it all into the waste disposal hatch that led straight down into the churning waters of the ocean.
Sam was kneeling facing the door, staring up into all their faces, the sculpture next to his feet, his face a picture of shock and terror.
For a heartbeat there was only silence – and then: ‘Oh my God – Nick!’ Eleni burst into racking, heaving sobs. ‘What have you done to him?’
She pushed her way into the bathroom, then dropped to the floor beside her husband. She reached over and touched his face, just as Brett yelled: ‘Are you trained in first aid? Is he breathing? We need to start CPR—’
Brett and the captain rushed into the en-suite, elbowing Eleni to the side as they grabbed Nick’s wrist to check for a pulse they wouldn’t find, barking instructions at each other.
‘Can we do anything to stem the bleeding?’
‘Yeah, but I can’t find a pulse … Captain – I think he’s—’
‘We need to at least try … We need to activate the radio distress signal. Get the defibrillator, quick – and Brett, radio for Kai and Noah to come up here immediately in case we need to stop anyone from leaving.’
‘You mean me?’ cried Sam. Lucy stood still, watching as he waved his hands in bewildered protest. ‘But I just found him like this,’ he said, his voice full of horror. ‘Lucy told me to come in here – she closed the door – I didn’t touch him. You have to believe me!’
No one was listening. Brett was now shouting into his radio for Kai and Noah to come to the master stateroom urgently.
The captain was holding down a red button on hers, yelling mayday, mayday and a series of panicked updates to the coastguard’s emergency operator.
One phrase was clearly audible: ‘It’s too late – the passenger is deceased. ’
Eleni’s cries grew louder, while Talia took a step back, trembling, murmuring ‘oh God’ over and over again.
‘She set me up!’ Sam was yelling, pointing at Lucy. ‘She made me come down here – just now, she came and got me from the sky lounge – she said I had to help Talia! She gave me that ornament – she put in in my hand!’
‘What? No, I didn’t,’ Lucy piped up, her explanation ready. ‘I’ve been with Eleni and Talia in Eleni’s cabin for the past fifteen minutes at least – we were talking about Sam, and how oddly he’s been behaving all week!’
‘That’s right,’ said Talia. ‘We’ve all been worried about Sam spying on us – and taking a very close interest in me, especially.’
‘It’s true,’ Michaela piped up, already back from her swift trip to the galley and the waste chute. ‘I went in to check on them only about five minutes ago, to see if anyone needed anything – right before I came to see how things were going in the engine room.’
Lucy exhaled in relief. Well done, both of you.
‘And Nick wouldn’t have been attacking anyone,’ added Eleni tearfully. ‘Why would he do that? We’ve been so happy, especially since we’ve been here – we were doing so well! I loved him so much—’
‘That’s bullshit!’ said Sam. ‘He’s been sleeping with Talia, here on the yacht – right under your nose, for fuck’s sake.’
Eleni blinked, then looked in hurt confusion at Talia. God, she’s good. ‘Nick would never do that to me,’ she sobbed. ‘How dare you – how could you even say something like that?’
‘And more to the point, why are we even having this conversation?’ shouted Talia furiously. ‘We’ve just walked in and found Sam shut in here with a murder weapon, next to Nick’s dead body!’
‘Then why?’ spluttered Sam. ‘Why would I kill him? You’ve got this all figured out, I see, so fucking tell me that?’
‘Well, that’s obvious,’ spat Lucy. ‘You’ve just admitted that you have some crazy theory that Nick and Talia were having an affair.
And you’ve been practically stalking Talia – we’ve all seen it!
The way you’ve been hovering around her all week, telling her she’s too good for her husband.
You were jealous and obsessed – plain and simple. ’
‘And she’s not the only one you’ve been stalking,’ added Eleni. She turned to the captain. ‘He even got into my room somehow and put a hidden camera in there.’
‘But I didn’t!’ Sam was apoplectic with rage.
‘You did, Sam. Captain Taylor, it’s in my cabin, sitting on the bedside table. I can show you, if you like.’
The captain looked up from Nick’s body and gave Eleni the briefest nod.
‘Sam’s been creeping around you all week – the crew noticed it too.’ It was Michaela, now with Johanna at her side. Kai and Noah stood in the doorway, like two bodyguards, ready to restrain Sam if he tried to make a run for it. Michaela looked at Sam. ‘You’re always wherever the women are.’
‘That’s so true,’ murmured Johanna.
The captain put down her radio. ‘The authorities have instructed me to keep Sam safely confined, away from Nick’s body.’ She waved the deckhands over, then turned to Sam. ‘Will you come with Noah and Kai to my quarters willingly, or do we need to restrain you?’
Sam’s shoulders dropped; he seemed to wilt under her gaze. He knows there’s no way out of this. ‘Fine. I’ll come,’ he said.
Then, watched by his audience of crew and guests, Sam was led out of the cabin and away above deck.
‘I can’t believe this … what the fuck just happened?
I was only asleep for half an hour, wasn’t I?
’ Mark was rambling, pale with shock. They’d grabbed a brief moment of refuge in their cabin; the captain had instructed everyone to wait under the awning on the main deck for the police to arrive, and any minute they’d have to join the others.
He looked at Lucy, dazed. ‘Sam … killing Nick? I just … I can’t get my head around it.’
Lucy took a deep breath. I promised him: no more lies.
She wanted to be honest with him. But how would he ever understand?
Mark, as good and decent as he was, was still a man.
He could never truly get what it was like to suffer, as a woman, in the ways that Eleni and Talia both had at Nick’s hands.
No; she had to keep this one last secret from him.
‘It’s unbelievable,’ she agreed. ‘I’m in shock too.
But it’s not the only thing Sam’s done this week.
’ She relayed everything Eleni had told her about Sam’s blackmail of their boss.
‘If it gets out, Rory will never come back from it. This is the best leverage I could ever have hoped to get – and I didn’t even have to get it myself.
Talia’s going to send all the evidence to me.
And I’m going to use it to get justice for Alfie, for Mum – for all the families. ’
Mark stared at her, a mixture of shock and something that looked like pride in his eyes. Then he shook his head slowly. ‘I can’t say I like the idea of you using something like this. But I get it – and I’ve got your back, with everything. Always.’
‘Thank you,’ Lucy breathed. She moved towards him and let him wrap his arms around her; she melted into them. Cuddling – remember this?
‘I love you,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I should have told you everything. I shouldn’t have kept all this from you. And sorry for being all … weird and secretive.’
‘It’s all right, love. Really – it’s forgiven.’
A relief as warm and heavy as a weighted blanket enveloped her, and she sobbed – all the tears she’d held back every day as she got on the Tube in the morning and crunched numbers in front of a screen at Ashworth.
Everything she’d done; all the ways she and Mark had suffered.
Everything she’d been through to try to make things right for her family.
It would all be worth it now. For the first time in more than two years, the power was in her hands.